I maintain every day standing conferences with numerous teams inside our know-how crew, and the questions virtually all the time drifts to: “What’s at the moment’s problem?” Generally that problem may be, “We will’t print at considered one of our ambulatory care services,” or “At this time, we are able to’t ship diagnostic pictures to our distant Radiologists.” The assembly helps us to focus our consideration, and because the CTO of OU Well being in Oklahoma Metropolis, my job is to remove the problems that crop up on these conferences and work to attenuate or remove these points repeating sooner or later.
To take action, we would have liked to sort out the foundation of the issue. This, together with our need to exchange our digital well being report and income cycle system, contributed to OU Well being’s determination to utterly overhaul our IT infrastructure in help of our long-term organizational wants.
OU Well being strives to deliver innovation to our sufferers. As an educational well being system, we function considered one of 71 Nationwide Most cancers Institute-designated most cancers facilities within the nation, Oklahoma’s solely Degree I trauma middle and the state’s highest stage NICU, providing high-quality affected person care and operating medical trials resulting in thrilling new therapies. Greater than fixing our every day complications, our IT overhaul will basically rework how we handle our infrastructure and administer the enterprise and medical techniques we use to help our healthcare professionals and sufferers.
A whole revamp of a well being system’s IT infrastructure is a frightening job. To make use of a well-worn cliché, it’s like attempting to work on the engine of a transferring practice. The method has taken dedication and cautious planning, the work of my crew and the help of know-how companions like Cisco to place collectively and roll out an answer throughout OU Well being’s websites.
A Contemporary Begin, a Greenfield Community, and Some Limitations
I’ve had the privilege of working in healthcare IT for over 13 years. My earlier expertise consists of serving because the VP of Expertise Structure at Cablevision for seven years and two years at Discovery because the SVP of Enterprise Structure, the place I gained a wealth of data in telecommunications and leisure. Following a six-month sabbatical, I had the chance to return to my earlier function, however I made a decision to make use of my experience to help others in a way more impactful method. Watching my spouse struggling for years along with her group’s IT as a household apply supplier and educator made me understand the difficulties that come up when coping with healthcare IT techniques. Due to a good friend I had labored with earlier in my profession, I joined a healthcare consulting firm launching my profession in healthcare IT to assist physicians and sufferers obtain the very best outcomes in medical care.
OU Well being formally launched in July 2021, following a historic merger that mixed the College of Oklahoma School of Medication college apply and OU Medication, Inc. (sole member, College Hospitals Belief) to create OU Well being — Oklahoma’s first totally built-in tutorial well being system. The merger aligned the OU Well being medical enterprise with nationwide finest practices throughout the healthcare business and enabled the hospitals and clinics to turn out to be one unified and cohesive group.
Since my arrival at OU Well being in March of 2022, I’ve labored carefully with our IT management crew on the Epic migration mission. This initiative moved OU Well being to a brand new EHR system. To realize this, we deployed a greenfield resolution, which concerned organising new networks, techniques, knowledge facilities and functions, whereas maintaining our legacy techniques operating.
Sadly, the environment was not in one of the best form. It featured outdated tools, overlapping options, outdated code, unpatched tools, and extra, which brought about quite a few challenges. Our community was additionally very sluggish, which meant that it took 15 to half-hour for a radiologist to obtain X-rays and CAT scans at our distant areas.
This hindered workflows and brought about frustration amongst our clinicians and hospital workers. They needed to name us each time one thing went mistaken, and we had no method to proactively monitor and restore our techniques. When a hyperlink went down, we didn’t know learn how to restore it. It was clear that an overhaul was essential to make sure that our healthcare professionals may give attention to caring for his or her sufferers and never fear about technical points.
We Wished Redundancy, Resilience, and Efficiency—That Meant Cisco
Healthcare organizations are considerably conservative when procuring IT. We don’t search for the most recent resolution, nor can we have a look at the most cost effective. We don’t lower prices as a result of sufferers’ lives are at stake. As an alternative, we have a look at probably the most superior tried and true techniques. We take this strategy when choosing lab tools, imaging and diagnostic techniques, surgical provides, and extra.
At OU Well being, we’ve got a long-standing relationship with Cisco, and our lead engineer holds CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification. Our inside mission supervisor additionally brings many years of expertise in managing large-scale Cisco deployments. Everyone knows that Cisco can ship extremely performant, redundant and resilient infrastructure. Nonetheless, my job requires me to be goal, so I attend occasions like Gartner Summits and the annual HIMSS World Well being Convention & Exhibition to see what’s on the market. I’ve a superb grasp of the know-how panorama, and I’ve but to discover a companion that may ship on its guarantees like Cisco.
Hospitals are 24/7 establishments, and hospital infrastructure should totally help a never-down situation.
After we created the specs for our new surroundings, we checked out three issues: excessive redundancy, excessive resilience, and excessive efficiency. OU Well being, like most healthcare organizations, runs 24 hours a day, seven days per week, and our infrastructure should totally help a never-down situation. When it got here time to construct our new surroundings, we didn’t ask, “Why Cisco?” The actual query was, “Why not Cisco?”
Redefining Our Community with Software program-Outlined Networking
When it got here time to pitch our new infrastructure, the crew labored with Cisco’s community architects, exterior companions, and our inside lead architects. We put collectively a funding request and introduced it to our board. We anticipated our executives to approve lower than what our budgeted request was, however as a substitute we got the inexperienced mild to construct all the pieces we had requested for – a state-of-the-art community and system surroundings that might put OU Well being on the map as a top-tier medical middle.
We constructed our new community on Cisco know-how. Its core layer is Cisco ACI (Utility Centric Infrastructure), a software-defined networking resolution, to assist section our community. We constructed redundant high-speed hyperlinks all through our Broad Space Community (WAN) and a number of paths connecting our core community to our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory techniques. Then we’ve got a number of routers to deal with our software-defined community and segmentation. If a router or section fails, we divert site visitors to an alternate path.
We use Cisco ACI to route site visitors to particular locations inside our community. An important instance is lab outcomes. Our lab tools doesn’t talk with the surface world, however our technicians should ship outcomes to our EMR. So, we’ve segmented the community to switch outcomes solely to particular servers that then add them to our information techniques.
Affected person well being consists of their healthcare knowledge, and we prioritize the safety round our sufferers’ protected well being info (PHI). We used ACI to create a firewalled zone for PHI and different delicate knowledge per HIPAA rules. Customers can solely entry that surroundings in the event that they’re performing a transaction requiring that info.
We additionally use Cisco UCS servers for scalable effectivity and agility, Cisco Identification Companies Engine (ISE) for endpoint administration, and we go end-to-end on Cisco wi-fi options, consisting of Cisco Catalyst 9130AX and 9166 entry factors and 9800-80 controllers. As well as, we adopted Cisco VDI to combine a few of our legacy techniques (operating on historic machines) into our new infrastructure. Virtualizing these permits us to maintain them operating till we’re in a position to substitute the techniques with out disrupting care.
Migrating Our Knowledge Facilities to Guarantee IT Transparency
Our three new knowledge facilities carry the load of our new community. Two of our knowledge facilities are energetic/energetic and mirror one another, splitting our workloads in two and with every facility operating at 50% capability. Our third knowledge middle is for catastrophe restoration (DR) and has redundant hyperlinks to all our hospitals, clinics, and ambulatory techniques. Ought to the unthinkable occur and our main knowledge facilities fail, the third knowledge middle will guarantee we stay operational.
One in all our greatest challenges and alternatives was migrating our techniques and infrastructure to new, extra sustainable knowledge facilities. As an alternative of constructing our personal on-prem knowledge facilities, we determined to companion with a top-tier co-location facility who may host our knowledge facilities and decrease our footprint dramatically. We partnered with TierPoint, and have been one of many first purchasers at their new facility constructed with effectivity in thoughts. They architected the facility, cooling, HVAC, and constructing supplies to scale back their carbon footprint. We profit from sturdy redundancy and backup options, and the energy-efficient know-how helps decrease our working bills whereas defending the surroundings. Shifting our knowledge middle off-prem was considered one of our greatest enterprise and tech selections.
On June 3, 2023, OU Well being went reside with Epic and our new infrastructure. We had already moved to our new main community in March 2023, however this was the ultimate check. We’re already reaping the rewards of our new Cisco infrastructure. We’re now not fielding complaints about sluggish Wi-Fi speeds, connection failures, community section outages and VPN points. OU Well being can entry what they want rapidly, getting sufferers what they want sooner. I look ahead to sitting down with our care groups to seek out methods to develop, innovate and construct on our new platform.
Cisco Is Serving to OU Well being Elevate Our Group
Earlier than lengthy, my IT crew will be capable of leverage our new Cisco community to allow and execute OU Well being’s enterprise imaginative and prescient. We will combine new departments, areas, and services into our community sooner as a result of we anticipated the necessity to construct extra WAN connections and have a complete map of each present and future state. Up to now, each community addition was a one-off occasion. However now, we are able to develop our platform as wanted so as to add highly effective new functions like knowledge analytics and inhabitants well being administration (PHM) instruments to mixture affected person info throughout a number of techniques and applied sciences. Now that we’ve got rolled out Epic, we’ve got a strong basis to assist us push the envelope of high quality affected person care and cutting-edge analysis.
The most effective minds gravitate to organizations that allow them add worth by supporting a enterprise imaginative and prescient as a substitute of fixing issues.
Our new Cisco infrastructure is a beneficial retention and recruitment instrument. Clinicians and researchers additionally wish to work in high-tech environments. They would favor user-friendly techniques over combating digital varieties, drowning in countless emails, or ready hours for medical pictures, check outcomes, and trial and affected person knowledge. Once they have probably the most environment friendly instruments and IT works flawlessly, they’ll give attention to their sufferers and analysis.
OU Well being is on a mission to raise and rework our group right into a top-tier tutorial well being system. Our management sees know-how as key to delivering on our imaginative and prescient and enterprise technique. We’re increasing our providers and analysis initiatives and can proceed to innovate in diabetes and most cancers care, pediatrics, and geriatrics. We wish to make a distinction in Oklahoma and past by bringing one of the best medical care to the populations we serve.
Share:
